The Past and Present of Loki Laufeyson
by Candelabra
Summary: In his cell in Asgard Loki entertains visitors and contemplates the past.


A/N: This was written as an attempt to get into Loki's head. Warnings for abusive language and potential triggers for suicide and eating disorders

* * *

As prisons go, it is not a bad one. A plain cell and with plain walls, but large, and with a comfortable enough bed and a little private area to deal with bodily wastes. They provide food - inelegant servant's fare - and clean water for him twice daily, the guards entering and leaving as quickly as they can while retaining their dignity.

Loki spends most of his time sitting on the bed with his eyes shut, thinking. Mostly he thinks of new ways to torment the guards – within the first few weeks of having his gag removed he had driven away the first set with his words. This second set has lasted a little longer, mostly because they've wisely remained out of easy range of hearing whenever it's possible.

Sometimes he thinks of the Chitauri, though he tries not to. At least they and their leader will have a very difficult time taking him from here.

Sometimes he thinks of Asgard's royal family. He thinks of Frigga, regal and resigned as she overlooked his trial. Odin, solemn and disappointed. Thor, hurt and subdued. It makes him smile to remember them so. Thor had said, before, that they all had mourned Loki. He did not think it true then, and he does not now, but as the list of his crimes was read out and his sentence pronounced he saw in all of their faces, behind whatever mask duty demanded of them, something like grief.

Often, he thinks of his failed conquest of Earth. He thinks of the things he could have done, should have done, who he underestimated and how. He thinks of his time with the Chitauri and considers how glad he is to be here instead of still in their grasp.

He thinks, maddeningly, of that human that he killed when Thor was locked in the glass prison. He thinks of the words he spoke as the life flowed out of him, sluggish and slow.

_"You lack conviction."_

* * *

Once, when they were children, Loki broke Thor's arm.

Not directly. It went something like this: The two royal children were forbidden to leave the safe chambers of the palace without escort, but being daring and rebellious they contrived to sneak out one day and find their way to the base of a great mountain's trail. There they hesitated, daunted a little by the prospect of even worse punishment than what they could already expect, but at last they decided to climb the trail and so at least have something to boast of.

They reached a sheer cliff, and though by this point Loki was beginning to think it might be best if they turned back, as he noticed how close to nightfall it was, Thor still thought they could reach the top. After all, half-climbing a mountain was nothing to boast of.

He was the elder, so he decided to climb first. Loki, behind him, made note of a bird's nest nestled in a small branch some ways up and to the left from Thor.

"Brother," he called up before he began to follow him. "If you're going to make me climb this wretched rock, couldn't you at least bring me a gift to make up for it?"

Thor laughed and looked over his shoulder, balanced precariously on the cliff side. "This whole venture was your idea in the first place, Loki!"

Loki didn't deny it. He pointed. "There, you see the nest? Can you bring it to me?"

Thor looked. Loki could just make out the dubious expression on his face from below. "That? What do you want that for?"

"It's a species I don't think I've seen before. I'd like to look at it closer."

"Then come up here yourself for it!"

"Thor," said Loki, his voice long-suffering. "It'll take but a minute." And when Thor still hesitated, "Or are you too afraid?"

That did it. He could see it in the set of his brother's jaw. At once Thor began determinedly making his way toward the nest, and Loki, watching from the ground, smiled. Convincing Thor to go through extra effort to please his little brother always made him feel accomplished.

There was a small rock in Thor's path that from below looked like it might be unstable. Loki watched as he approached it, almost certain that if he put his foot on it he would fall. That was his aim, of course – if Thor fell and was hurt, he might be able to convince him to go home.

In the moment before Thor put his weight on it Loki glanced again between where he was climbing and where the ledge he was standing on curved up into the cliff, and thought suddenly that the fall was really quite long –

"Thor!" he shouted, and in that moment Thor lost his footing. The rock crumbled as he put his weight on it, and he couldn't catch himself with his other limbs. He was falling, and for a moment Loki was paralyzed with horror and guilt.

Then he was running toward him, calling his name and helping him to stand, all brotherly concern and affection. Thor's arm was bent strangely, and Loki thought he must be in terrible agony, but he bit his lip and bore it, white-faced, without crying or moaning. The two of them began to make their way down the mountain together, the lure of the cliff and of the bird's nest and their fear of retribution utterly forgotten.

Later, after they'd received their scolding and Thor had been taken to the healers, Loki sat alone on his bed. All his parents' worry and anger had been reserved for Thor – for he was the elder, and therefore the one responsible, and besides which he had been hurt. For Loki his mother had barely spared a moment's disapproval – Odin's gaze had rested on him longer, and with more weight, but he did not speak beyond pronouncing him confined to his room for a full week in punishment.

So Loki was left alone to his thoughts.

He had not meant for Thor to break his arm in the end. A little bruising, a bit of a scare, something to show Thor that Loki was right and it was not safe to keep climbing anymore. But he would not let himself feel guilty about it – Thor was not hurt _too_ badly, and they both got home safe and sound in the end. His plot had been a success. And anyway, Thor was certainly not going to say anything of it to their parents – he'd no idea that Loki had done it on purpose.

Still. He kept picturing his brother's pained face, even as he lay back on his bed and sought sleep.

* * *

Loki's mildly surprised the first time one of his brother's friends visits him. Mostly because of all of them, he hadn't expected Volstagg to be the first.

The huge man stands at the door to his cell, staring at him with an utterly miserable expression. Loki wonders if he's here at Thor's insistence.

"I am sorry," Volstagg says abruptly. "If ever I said things to you that were harmful, and so drove you to this madness."

Loki blinks, long and slow. Something in him, something foolish and soft, is delighted to hear the man's words. How often has he been the subject of Volstagg's and Fandral's cruel taunting, disguised as teasing camaraderie? How hurtful was it, to see this great fat fool _laugh_ upon seeing Loki crowned king?

But what could have made Volstagg see the errors of his ways? What would bring him here to beg forgiveness?

"Madness?" he repeats, voice low and silky, thoughtful. Volstagg waits a moment, as if he expects him to say something more. Just to be contrary, Loki holds his tongue on what he wishes to say.

"In the days after you – fell," Volstagg goes on in a rush, "Thor had words with us. His time on Midgard had changed him you see," and perhaps he cannot see the effect those words have on Loki, or perhaps he just can't bring himself to stop now that he's started, "and he had been thinking about our years growing up together, he said he thought perhaps you had some reason to feel unwanted, and I wanted to say that if I played any part in that…"

He will go on forever if Loki does not interrupt.

"Thor is a fool," he says coldly, standing from his bed, "And his time on Earth has not changed that. You seek me out now to apologize because you fear sharing the blame for my actions. Coward. Idiot! How weak do you think I must be, to be driven mad by the poor jibes and witless jokes you could come up with? You are always overestimating your intelligence and your worth to your companions. You speak fancy apologies because it makes you feel noble and kind. Your time would be better spent gorging yourself until your stomach bursts, you fat oaf."

He has stridden to the door by the time he is finished, and with each step Volstagg has retreated with wide, wide eyes, his skin pale now beneath his beard. Loki cannot wrap his hands around the ensorcelled bars of his door, so he clenches them at his side instead and wishes he could summon a knife to throw into his gut.

"I do not retract my apology," Volstagg says after a moment, struggling to maintain some dignity, and gives a short bow in an approximation of courtesy.

Loki watches him go and feels satisfaction settle in his gut, sickly and pleasant.

* * *

Frigga comes a week after Volstagg's visit. She stands at the door to his cell and watches him without speaking while he lies on the bed, gazing at the ceiling.

He bears the quiet scrutiny for as long as he can. When he speaks his voice is light. "Have you come to apologize as well?"

"For what?" she asks, and he chuckles, but he feels strangely hurt by her words.

"You lied to me," he says.

"You lied to me," she reminds him. "You lie to everyone, you always have."

There's something in her voice, like amusement or resignation, that makes him turn to look at her. Her eyes glitter, but she is composed, her hair and gown perfectly arranged. It was she that taught him to always be careful about his appearance.

"I learned from the best," he says. He still feels no inclination to rise – he is taller than her and has been for centuries, but right now he wishes to look up to her.

Something that might be the beginning of a smile or a grimace stretches her lips for just a moment. "Oh, Loki," she says lowly, and the tremor in her voice eases the hurt in his chest. "It was alright for you to shun responsibility when you were a child. It is not so, now."

There are a thousand cruel things pressing at his lips, a thousand evil, hurtful, accusing remarks that he is almost sure will make her composure shatter and let him know for sure that he is important enough to her that he can cause her pain.

But this is Frigga. This is the woman he called mother for nearly a thousand years.

He raises his eyebrows and turns his gaze back to the ceiling, mouth closed, and refuses to look at her for the remainder of her visit.

* * *

He fell for a long, long time after he let go – through empty space, past the drag of stars, made blind and deaf by the sights and the silence.

At first he thought of nothing, felt nothing but the pain of the fall. When he did not die after the first few horrifying minutes he felt oddly thwarted. It was a familiar feeling, but for once he could not even blame Thor for his failure – he'd succeeded in letting go, and it was only his own fault that he could not succeed in forcing himself to stop instinctively using his sorcery to shield him from the dead, cold vacuum of space.

Well, from the vacuum at least. He could not see any part of his skin, could not move anything more than his eyelids while he was locked in the fall, but he knew he was Jotun blue.

After a while he shut his eyes, wishing to escape the terrifying wonder of the sights around him. He could almost pretend he is sleeping in his bed at home, that this is perhaps some strange side-effect of a miscast spell. That everything from the moment his father announced that Thor would be crowned king had just been a horrifying dream. If only the pain and the strain on his magic were not so insistently present, he could make himself believe it.

(Later, after the Chitauri had found him and offered him a kingdom, he shied away from the weakness of that memory. He had not survived because he failed to die – he had survived because Thor had failed to kill him.)

* * *

Sif visits him twice. The first time she hurls invective and condemnations at him while he sits and watches her, an amused and unperturbed expression on his face. He barely pays attention to her words. Instead, he focuses on her face, on the righteous anger in the set of her chin and the furrow of her brow.

When she is done, and is merely standing there, silent, waiting for the inevitable spew of spite and hate to come from his mouth, he smiles and tells her with utmost sincerity how disappointed he was when the Destroyer did not manage to kill her and delights in the hurt she can't keep from flashing across her face.

The second time she visits him she is much calmer. "I wish to say that you and I were never friends," she tells him, and he almost rolls his eyes. _I could have told you that,_ he is about to say, but she continues. "But you are the liar, not I."

She leaves without even a pretense of courtesy, without giving him the chance to respond in any dignified way. He smiles after her, his eyes hard.

* * *

When they were young, Loki cut her hair.

He did it as a favour, though an unasked for one. Sif always complained about it getting in the way during training and practice fights, and though she never once suggested that someone should cut it for her he knew the way to fix her problem would be to just get rid of it.

He planned it out meticulously, and broke into her room without incident. Once there, he stood above her bed with the knife held in his hand, watching her sleep.

For a long moment Loki waited, suddenly torn. He was sure what he was doing would help her – in the end, at least. He was equally sure that in the moment she would be greatly upset. It would take her awhile to realize that really he'd done her a kindness in ridding her of that useless luxury of long, gorgeous hair that she took such annoyed pride in.

But he had gotten this far. There was no point in turning back now.

He reached out and in one smooth motion caught up her hair and sliced it to the base of her skull.

* * *

When Fandral at last decides to grace Loki's cell with his presence, it is obvious he does it reluctantly. Volstagg must have told him of what happened during his visit.

"Hello there, Silvertongue," he says, falsely cheerful. The fool, everything from his stance to his voice shows how uneasy he is.

"Hello there, whore," Loki returns brightly. He has just finished his morning meal and is delighted at the entertainment Fandral will provide him with. "If you've come to seek assistance in curing whatever horrific disease you've contracted from your most recent dalliance, I'm afraid I'll have to deny you. My magic is bound now, you see."

"You're a bit off the mark," Fandral says, and he's trying to turn it into a good-natured bit of jesting. Loki will have none of that.

Within a half hour Fandral has fled and Loki is left alone again, to plot and conspire and think endlessly, mindlessly on the past.

* * *

They were all of them friends as youths. The grim quietness of Hogun, the humour and boasting boisterousness of Fandral and Volstagg, the drive and sardonic humour of Sif, all of them were a good off-set to the tediousness of Thor as a big brother.

It took Loki a long time to begin hating them. It took many, many days of enduring teasing, digging remarks at his womanly skills and unfavourable comparisons to Thor's achievements to wish them harm.

If they all expected to be served as well as they gave, in their jesting, Loki never saw that such serving included himself. His teasing grew crueller as the years passed, more cutting and exact, causing hurt and embarrassment rather than merriment and laughter. So they grew less and less fond of him, and he of them, until at last Loki was only Thor's unwanted, tag-along little brother, isolated and bitter.

They all saw as his smiles grew more and more false in their presence, they who had known him since he was a child. They worried for Thor's sake, not his, because if there was one who never saw the cruelty in Loki it was his own foolish oaf of a brother.

* * *

When Hogun visits, he does not even try to speak. He looks upon Loki with a blank face, and Loki, who has always hated him worst of all Thor's friends, sneeringly tries to provoke some reaction. "So Hogun has come to see the evil, traitor-prince of Asgard brought low," he says. "Hogun battle-hungry, whose loins stir only at the sight of blood and death, who fucks the bodies of his enemies to prolong his sense of victory. Wretched scum. You think yourself better than me?"

All that he gets for his efforts is a change in expression, from impassivity to something like revulsion. Hogun has always been far too smart to fall into the trap of speaking with him when he is in a cruel mood, and he leaves without ceremony while Loki is still spewing his bile.

* * *

Odin spoke to him alone the morning before Thor's planned coronation. He asked after Loki's studies, his adventures, his opinions on ruling. Loki answered in as much detail as he could, glad of his attention and hoping to impress him.

Then Odin asked after Thor and what Loki thought of his capabilities and Loki went quiet. Here he had thought Odin was here to speak with him about himself, taking personal interest in his younger son's activities, but it had only been a front. It was always really about Thor.

So he lied. He smiled and said that though he thought Thor could sometimes be a bit headstrong, he was confident that bearing the crown would help give him grow more mature and responsible.

Odin watched him closely as he spoke, and clasped his hand on his shoulder afterward. "Loki, my son, I am glad to hear this from you. Your intellect and your diplomacy will make you a great advisor for Asgard's king."

The words set a warmth in Loki's stomach, such that he almost broke and told his father the truth. But no. He'd already set the pieces on the board.

Too late to back out now.

* * *

One morning when Loki wakes, Odin is there, waiting on the other side of the cell door.

Loki sits up in his bed and leans back against the wall, watching him. His – the All-Father is clad in his full, royal armour, but he looks like an old man, weary and weighted with sadness and disappointment.

Loki, looking at him, can hardly believe he ever thought he was indomitable.

"My son," he begins, and Loki laughs. He laughs for a long time, as if he finds the words hilarious rather than painful to hear. He is aware of Odin staring at him, disapproving, and all he can think is _you cannot call me that, not after you said no, not after you let me fall to the Chitauri._

When his laughter at last subsides he shakes his head and closes his eyes.

He opens them to find that Odin has left.

* * *

The night before Thor was to be officially presented with Mjolnir, he came to Loki's room.

They used to visit one another's rooms all the time, but they did so less and less as they grew older, so although Loki was not exactly surprised to find his brother waiting for him at the door he had also not been entirely expecting him.

Thor, it turned out, was nervous and wanted his little brother's reassurance that he would be a worthy wielder of Mjolnir. Loki scoffed and reminded him of how just the other day he had successfully led Sif and the Warriors Three on a grand quest in Vanaheim, and Thor smiled and laughed with him, comforted.

How Loki resented him, in that moment! He had never really wished to own Mjolnir, but their father had made it clear that to bear it was a great honour. He'd also made it clear that Thor was always the one to whom it would one day be given, and for that reason alone Loki had longed for it. He had been no less brave in his ventures together with Thor, no less worthy, or so he believed. But Odin had never even considered him.

Thor was utterly oblivious. The two of them sat side by side on Loki's expansive bed, in his book-strewn room, Thor excited and apprehensive all at once and all the time entirely honest with him. Loki could only smile and give him soft platitudes. He told him such little lies, about how Thor was surely so noble and strong that Loki had no doubt he'd be worthy of the hammer. About how excited he was to see Thor heft it high before the whole of Asgard and have his name shouted with love and admiration by the people.

Loki was always lying like that. The truth – that he thought Thor a fool, overbearing, far too arrogant, utterly undeserving of the praise and love that followed him everywhere he went – would have broken his brother's heart to hear. And that was something he could not bear to be the cause of.

After all, blood is thicker than water. Thor was his brother and for that reason, if no else, Loki had to love him.

* * *

Every day of his captivity Thor visits him for an hour. At first Loki cannot control his rage and bites into him with cruel words for the duration of his visits. When Thor tries to respond, it is the highlight of Loki's day, and they spend the whole time exchanging shouts and accusations and vicious insults.

Eventually Thor learns to control his temper, and does not speak at all. Incensed, Loki threatens those things he knows Thor holds dear – his friends, Midgard, the fair Jane, even Asgard and Frigga and Odin. Thor's face grows stormy, but he doesn't reply.

And so at last Loki resorts to silence. With his usual clumsiness, Thor tries to speak with him, to make amends. He asks, often, what Loki did after his fall, where he ended up and what was done to him. How he fell in with the Chitauri. Why he did everything he did. He offers forgiveness, for all that it is not his own to extend, acceptance, love, brotherhood.

It is no difficult matter for Loki to tune out his voice and ignore him entirely.


End file.
